Nadir
by porcelaindakota
Summary: It is his lowest point, a hopeless fight to retain his identity. The Avatar is dead, and the world won't wait any longer. Aangst oneshot.


**_I don't own Avatar, blah blah blah..._**

I am floating in an empty, twilit dream-world, _so _beautiful and different than where I came from. Here there is no more war, no more pain, no more horrendous responsibility as the great and mighty Avatar, savior of the world! Here I can finally rest, and it feels _so good_.

I do not know how long I have been here, and I do not really care. All I know is that this place is quiet and that it is truly _bliss_. I don't have to be afraid or angry or even happy any more. I can just…be.

I know that I am dead. I have known this ever since I began to arrive here, piece by hazy piece, hours or days or perhaps even eons ago. I remember how I died. I think about it sometimes, while I hang here in gentle nothing-ness.

It was the final battle with Ozai; I still remember the palace, breaking into it, the beautiful gold and red silk throne room where we fought. I remember I was winning at first. Then, I remember pain. Horrible, earth-stopping pain.

I don't like to think about the pain. Not here, where I don't _have _to think about it.

Then I remember how it began to go dark, how my eyes seemed to be clouding at the edges, and how I tried to shake my head to get rid of the fuzzy edges, and it just made me hurt worse. And I remember Katara, and Sokka and Toph and Zuko, in a circle around me, grief and defeat in their faces. I remember the Fire Lord, laughing behind them. I remember screams and tears.

After that there is only this place, this wonderful colorless limbo that I have landed in. I never want to leave. I just want to stay here, suspended, and never have to feel or see any of those things again.

I guess it's a childish response, to want to stay here and hide from everything, and that, as the Avatar, I shouldn't think that way. But at the same time, I am just a child. A child who was given too much responsibility, too much power, too much anguish. I think I've earned the right to stay here.

I know it won't happen that way, though. Sooner or later, I'm going to have to go back. It isn't my choice to make.

I'll be born again into the Water Tribe; I wonder if Sokka or Katara will look for me, or if the Fire Nation will keep them away. I wonder if I'll be born into the South or North Pole. I wonder how many times I've lived in each of them.

I wonder if they'll feel familiar when I go back. Will faces jump out at me, people I've met in this life? Will I feel homesick when people talk about the Air Temples, bereft when others speak of the massacre of the Airbenders? I wonder if, after I'm reincarnated, any remnants or fragments of Aang will stay with me, or if I will simply become a whole new person. I wonder if any pieces of Roku or Kyoshi are with me now.

It's strange to think of them as separate people, considering that in fact they are me, but that's how it worked out. It's hard to think of your twelve-year-old self also simultaneously being an ancient old man. Personality-wise, Roku and I are pretty different.

This only manages to discourage me, making me think even more that I will keep nothing of Aang when I move on.

I wonder if being reborn will hurt. You always hear stories about women giving birth, and their incredible pain. I think it's almost the same thing with me. In a way, I'm sort of giving birth to a new me, if you think about it.

Thinking about pain again makes me shiver. Thoughts like that don't belong in a place like this.

I rest for a while longer. Minutes, hours, perhaps even days go by, and I can literally feel my body being rejuvenated and filled as I stay here.

But it has to end. _Everything good _always ends.

Everything lights up around me, bright bursting through the grey, and I know that it's happening. The Spirits have chosen a new vessel for the Avatar, and I'm being reincarnated. Soon, I will be in a new body, in a new place, as a new person.

But first, something odd happens. It takes me a minute, but then I realize I am seeing all of my past lives, not just as Aang, but as Roku and Kyoshi and everyone else, flashing around me, bits and pieces of the people and places I won't be able to recall.

It is in this moment that I am all-knowing, that, on the path to final death and rebirth, I can see all of my lives stretched out before me. I am trapped, falling in a sudden torrent of faces and voices that until now, I have never been able to recognize. Now, I know who they are, but I don't _know_ _them_. I did in past lives, but I don't now. Names match the faces in my mind, but nothing else.

Then, familiar faces, _my _loved ones appear, and I am finally scared, wanting to get out of this horrible beautiful place, and terrified to leave at the same time, despite the quiet voice telling me _'No, close your eyes, come.' _My friends swim before me, and tears pool in my dead eyes, and I know that I will never see them again. Not as Aang, at least—I'll be someone different, and I won't know them anymore, and, perhaps worse, they won't know me. They'll just become more of the faces, the people I cared for in past lives but now don't remember.

There is a white rush now, a roar of noise and blinding light, crashing down around me, and I know I am finally irrevocably being reborn. I am living my last moments as Aang. I wonder if I will appear to my next life, just as Roku showed himself to me.

I fight the rush all the way to the bottom, where there is blackness, so dark it hurts in contrast to the light, and I fight and I fight and I fight and still it overtakes me.

**_I got pretty sad writing this--it would be a horrible situation if Aang did die, and ran into Katara or someone later and he didn't recognize them. _**

**_Please review!_**

**_-sugarland_**


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